Have you ever wondered why your children really do take everything from you? And I really do mean EVERYTHING. You are sitting quietly on the couch, watching your son or daughter, and suddenly you see a movement, a look, or worse, a fear, a frustration, or a trauma of your own reflected there .
It's like looking into a living, breathing mirror that says right to your face, "Hey dad, hey mom, look at your own shit."
We want to do so much good as parents. We have the very best intentions. We hope our children will just live their own lives, nice and fresh, fruity and free, without the ballast we carry with us.
We think we can hide our own limiting beliefs, our insecurities and our tucked-away emotions from those little ones for a while. We put on a mask, smile kindly and think, "As long as I don't talk about it, they won't notice."
Well, I have an immediate punchy reality check for you: so that's completely impossible. It's an illusion. And that's immediately very annoying, but at the same time there also lies the greatest opportunity of your life.
Because in that which frustrates us, in that which is painful, there is always the key to transformation. Let's dive deep into the rabbit hole of the human brain to understand why your children are copying your unconscious programs, and how to make sure you can deliver them to the world as cleanly as possible.
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The walking sponges: Why the first five years are crucial
To understand why children take over everything, we need to look at neuroscience and hypnosis. In fact, between birth and the fifth year of life, something fascinating happens in a child's brain. In fact, the brain activity of a child in this age range is identical to the brain activity of an adult in deep hypnosis.
Yes, you read correctly. Id.
If we measure the brain waves of these little ones, we see that the so-called theta wave is the most dominant wave[1]. In the world of hypnotherapy, we know that the theta state is the gateway to the unconscious. It is the state in which the critical mind (the logical, analyzing voice that filters what is true and what is not) is totally undeveloped.
What does that mean in practice? It means that a child between the ages of zero and five has zero comma zero filter. There is no guardian at the gate of their unconscious. Everything you say, everything you do, but especially everything you feel, enters that child as the absolute truth. It is immediately written away on the hard drive as an unconscious automation program.
Now I can already hear some parents thinking, "Well, Edwin, that's not so bad with my child, who at three years old is already pretty critical and says 'no' to everything." Believe me, it's not that bad. That's not a critical mind, that's just copying behavior or testing boundaries.
With a few simple language tricks and hypnotic language patterns, you can move them in a completely different direction in no time. Their deep unconscious is still wide open. They are like a sponge that nonstop soaks up the emotional fluid of the environment.
You're influencing them anyway (so do it right)
After the fifth year, that critical mind slowly but surely begins to form. By the age of eight, that gate is largely closed. Then suddenly it becomes a very different story. Then you suddenly have to start pulling out serious hypnotic tricks to get them to move even a little bit toward their homework, or to get them off that damn phone properly.
I'll let you in on a little secret: I've written an entire book about this. It's coming out in September. I'll keep the title a secret for a while yet, but it's basically about how you can use the language of the unconscious to positively influence your children. To motivate them, to create peace in their minds, and to help them navigate this hectic world.
When I talk to people about "influencing" or "manipulating" your own children, some immediately shoot into resistance. "Yeah but Edwin, you can't hypnotize or influence your children, can you? They should just be able to be themselves, right?"
Mind you, here it comes: you are already influencing your children, too. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Only now you're probably doing it completely unconsciously. And we may seriously question whether that is the most convenient way.
Because when you unconsciously influence, you don't just pass on your beautiful qualities. You also pass on your stress. You pass on your fear of inadequacy. You pass on your tendency to please. You pass on your unprocessed anger. After all, children don't just learn from the wise lessons you read to them from a booklet. They learn a thousand times faster from what you do and who you are when you think they are not looking.
The invisible legacy: How trauma copies itself generationally
It goes even a step further than just copying behaviors they see. Scientific studies and epigenetics today show very clearly that certain traumas and emotional blueprints are passed on unconsciously, and sometimes even genetically[2].
The anecdotal evidence for this has now piled up so gigantic that we can safely speak of rock-solid proof. I have been seeing it for years in my practice and within the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands.
I remember a client, a young woman, who from absolutely nowhere was suffering from severe anxiety and panic symptoms. She didn't understand anything at all.
She said to me, "Edwin, this is bizarre. I've had a stable foundation all my life. I could never imagine having anxiety symptoms. My father always had severe anxiety symptoms, though. I used to always have to care for him and support him. I always thought: that will never happen to me. I am strong. And now, thud, out of nowhere, I'm 21 and sitting on the couch shaking with panic attacks."
I looked at her and asked, "Do you happen to know how old your father was when he first developed these anxiety symptoms?" She just didn't know that. She went to check with her family. And guess what? Her father had had his very first panic attack exactly at age 21. Exactly the same age. Out of nowhere, in big quotation marks.
This is no accident, ladies and gentlemen. This is how an unconscious program works. It is an emotional legacy that is activated in the child's nervous system and brain at a certain age, under a certain trigger.
The program was waiting all along on the hard drive, so diligently programmed by the environment in the first five years of life. We see this pattern in an awful lot of people. Traumas, addictions, relationship problems: it travels down the family tree like this, from generation to generation.
The minefield of parenting
Does this now mean we have failed as parents? Should we all now sit in a corner moping around with massive guilt? Absolutely not.
As a parent, you simply walk into a minefield from time to time. You don't know where those mines lie. You're tired, you've had a bad day at work, you walk into the kitchen and your child does something stupid. And boom! You explode. You shout something harsh, something unfair, or you pull up a wall of icy silence.
At a time like this, you think afterwards, "Oops.... this wasn't so helpful. This is going to be shrapnel clearing, debris clearing and picking up the pieces."
You simply cannot escape it. There is no such thing as a perfect upbringing, because perfect people don't exist. I often use the word "trauma," and to many people that sounds very heavy. Sometimes it is.
But you can also think of trauma simply as a problematic unconscious automatic program. That may sound a little friendlier, but the impact is the same: It's a piece of software in the brain that causes your child to block, become insecure or experience fear in certain situations later on.
Delivering completely cleanly, you won't succeed. Life itself will also shape and challenge your child. But (and here comes the huge opportunity) you can make sure you don't drop the giant emotional moving boxes of your old shit into their attic uninvited.
The three scenarios of cleansing: It's never too late
So when is the best time to start working with yourself? Let's look at the different scenarios:
Scenario 1: The ideal world (Before there are children)
If you start working on yourself, processing your own traumas, tackling your limiting beliefs AND cleaning up your unconscious programs before children are even in the picture.... yes, that's the grand prize. That is the very best scenario. For you then ensure that the emotional and energetic soil in which your future children are planted is already heartily fertile and free of weeds.
Unfortunately, for most people (including myself), that scenario did not apply. When I became a father, I was still up to my ears in the midst of all sorts of intense addiction problems. Well, then you know what you unconsciously pass on to your children: pure misery, unrest and instability. But I dealt with it. I dealt with it. I worked very hard on myself and broke a lot of old patterns. And the beautiful thing is: today I see that directly in my children.
By the way, research shows that men who experience stress share slightly different DNA in their sperm as a result, compared to less stress. In mice, this causes the children to develop strong bones and muscles, but it is not yet known exactly what effect this has on human children and whether it is all healthy. So stress does do something to your swimmers[3].
Scenario 2: When they are still small (0 to 5 years old)
Do you already have children and are they still small? Then grab your chance now. Because they are in that deep, hypnotic theta state, any change you make in yourself has a direct, almost one-to-one effect on them. When you become calmer, the child becomes calmer. When you release your fears, the unexplained tension in your toddler disappears. It's magical to see how quickly that dynamic shifts.
Scenario 3: They are already out the door (In their 20s or older)
Now I hear you thinking, "Yeah, nice Edwin, but my kids are already in their twenties. They are already out of the house. The harm is already done. It's too late."
So no, it's never too late. My own children are now in their twenties as well. And still I see that when I clean up a piece in myself, when I reach a deeper layer of consciousness again, it has an immediate effect on the connection with my children and on how they are in life. There is an invisible, deep connection between parent and child that never stops communicating. As the sender changes, so does the reception on the other end.
Stop complaining, look in the mirror
There are an awful lot of parents who run around non-stop complaining about their children. "Yes, my child has such a heavy backpack. My child has such a temper. My child has this disorder, or that label, or is so incredibly anxious."
Then I stand there, I listen to that, and all I can think is, "Dear Mom, dear Dad.... please take a really good look in the mirror."
You can send your child from therapist to therapist, though. You can stuff them with labels and externalize that the problem is "in the child," but in eighty percent of cases they are simply acting out your unprocessed emotions. They are carrying the burden you didn't want or couldn't carry.
Do you really want to help your child? Do you want to free them from those invisible chains? Then stop fixing the child, and start cleaning yourself up. Learn the skills to manage your own brain. Clean up your own messes. The cleaner you become, the more space your child will have to be truly fresh, fruity, free and authentically themselves. That is the greatest gift you can ever give them.
Learn hypnosis and fix things
To help yourself and influence your children even better, knowledge of hypnosis is incredibly helpful. Come to the free master class for an introduction.
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